President Donald Trump’s desire to claim Greenland for the United States has thrust the island’s wealth of natural resources firmly into the spotlight. But while geopolitical chatter may make it seem as if the Danish region’s precious metals and rare earths are easy to find, the reality is far more complex.
Part of Greenland’s appeal, in fact, comes from both the vastness of the region and the diversity of its geological features. Its ancient bedrock is four billion years old or more, metamorphic rocks were transformed by volcanic activity, with metal ores concentrated in southern Greenland, and sedimentary rocks in the northern regions are rich in lead and zinc.
“Almost half of the periodic table can be found in a large, little-explored landmass like Greenland with such a complex geological history,” says Diogo Rosa, an economic geologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
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But much of Greenland’s landmass is covered in ice that can be more than three kilometers thick, and Greenland is logistically a difficult place to work.
“Greenland’s climate can present challenges, especially in the north and east,” says Catherine Goodenough, chief geologist at the British Geological Survey. The equipment required for mining, personnel, logistics, export capacity and fuel consumption are all existing hurdles and ultimately, Goodenough says, lead to “the potential for higher costs, lower profitability and higher risk.”
There are no roads, railways or electricity in most of the area. Trying to tap the ice sheet, which covers 80 percent of Greenland, for minerals is undesirable, given that all necessary supplies would need to be brought inland by helicopter and that there are several kilometers of ice-covered sections of rock.
“Almost half of the periodic table can be found in large, little-explored landmasses with such complex geological histories as Greenland.” -Diogo Rosa, Economic Geologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland
Nevertheless, these obstacles have not stopped all exploration. The island has a gold mine and another site above the Arctic Circle that produces anorthosite, a mineral used to make fiberglass and paint. That mine exports its product through the fjord mostly during the part of the year when the waterways are not frozen. And rare earth elements collected in southern Greenland, an ice-free area with access to roads, ports and other critical infrastructure, are of greater interest to mining companies.
“From a mining business development perspective, there is really no reason yet to guess what is under the ice, because there is so much beneath the ice-free zone that can be explored further,” says Christian Juncher Jorgensen, a senior researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark, who focuses on environmental monitoring in mines in Greenland.
Crucial for the manufacturing of electronics and, most importantly, semiconductor chips, rare earth elements are highly sought after by tech companies. But compared to gold or copper, the market for rare earths is still small and complex, making the investment risky for the mining companies that will need to extract them, Rosa says. “There is a mismatch between the development of technology, which is very fast, and the lead time of a mining project, which takes decades,” he says.
In other words, perhaps no mining company wants to undertake a 10 to 20 year long exploration and permitting project, only to find that tech companies have found their way out of needing the rare earth elements.
And there’s another layer of complexity: Many of Greenland’s rare earths are found inside silicates, unlike the world’s other large deposits, which are typically found in carbonate or phosphate minerals — a difference that will require developing new, specialized processing techniques, Rosa says.
Jorgensen says mining permits in Greenland are also subject to a public hearing process and political decision-making. In the lead and zinc-rich Northeast, mining can lead to acidic drainage due to oxidation of sulfide minerals, which can leach heavy metals from mining waste, contaminating waterways. Jorgensen says these minerals are not as common in the South, where rare earth elements are found.
But mining operations in southern Greenland have run into other problems involving the radioactive elements uranium and thorium, which can occur in the same deposits of rare earth elements. For example, mining company Energy Transitions Minerals is currently in arbitration with the governments of Greenland and Denmark over uranium limitation rules, which have halted development of a mine at a location called Kvanfjeld near the southern tip of the island due to concerns about human exposure to radiation.
“You have to live up to these standards,” says Jorgensen, “and these standards are equivalent to the highest industry standards in the best-performing international countries.”
